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10/19/2007: "Breast Pump Industry Shakeup! Evenflo Buys Ameda!"

I periodically do a search on news about breastfeeding and breast pumps, and usually it's low key stuff - a mom hassled in a restaurant or mall, a resultant nurse-in of lactivists (lactation activists). At worst, it's somebody in the limelight like Rosie O'Donnell or Bill Maher saying something really stupid about breastfeeding. But no! This time it was really big news about breast pump companies themselves, and the whole dynamic of the industry changing: Evenflo buying out Ameda!

For obvious reasons, I've been watching this industry closely for going nigh on 18 years, and it's been fascinating to watch (and I've learned a lot) about the business models and the personalities behind the companies involved in selling breast pumps to breastfeeding mothers. When I first came on the scene with my foot-powered breast pump idea, I was a new mother, breastfeeding, and becoming involved in La Leche League. I signed up and started receiving their magazine, "New Beginnings". There was no web at the time. This was the prime source of breastfeeding information, the heartbeat of it. I had an idea, and I scoured every issue that came in the mailbox to see if anyone was doing anything like it, and to my amazement, for something so simple, nobody was. So of course, I applied for the patent.

As I was watching these ads month after month for several years, it was quite obvious who was the big company in the industry at the time -- it was Ameda, then a Swiss owned company known as Ameda-Egnell. They had the big color inside cover or back cover ads. The next company in ad-size only ran like half-page black and white ads, another Swiss owned company, Medela.

So when my patent issued, I wrote to every breast pump company I could find, I think about 6-10, and most I never heard back from, but the North American branch of Ameda-Egnell, was at first very interested indeed. But in the end, they told me they couldn't do it, and they were frank and admitted it would simply compete with their other lines of breast pumps too much, both their manual breast pumps, and their electric breast pumps. After all a foot-powered breast pump, falling squarely in the mid-range between those categories, would indeed take a bite out of each of them. I thought it was a foolish business decision on their part, because this was an opportunity to own the industry, but business deals are like courtships. You can't force them amicably. Another company, the smaller one, Medela, did ultimately take a license, but they have never been as really gung ho about marketing it as heavily as I thought it deserved, for likely the same reasons -- there is simply more money in electric breast pumps, particularly rentals you can turn over again and again and again.

I think there were other decisions made within each company that shifted the balance of power between them, because month after month, I saw the Ameda-Egnell ads shrinking away, and the Medela ads growing more prominant and full page. They started advertising that many La Leche League Leaders were Medela dealers, which of course, was a clever business arrangement. Who else to recruit but breastfeeding mothers who were helping other breastfeeding mothers? But suddenly ads making those claims stopped cold. I don't know what happened, but I can guess. I think the interests of the non-profit La Leche League and the for-profit Medela simply parted ways. I can only guess there were conflicts of interest.

About the same time, a new industry, Lactation Consultation was born, a rather medicalized form of the mothers-helping-mothers that La Leche League had been. As a Lactation Consultant, there are all kinds of educational requirements, examinations to pass, and Board Certificaton to acquire. I'm sure the time was simply right, but I have a guess as to which company was at the front of financial contributions to incubating this industry.

After a while, Ameda-Egnell advertisements completely faded away entirely from La Leche League's New Beginnings magazines. I wondered what happened to them, if they'd simply closed up shop. But then voila! There they were at the annual convention of lactation consultants, under new ownership of the much larger American medical products company, Hollister. For a while, Ameda was just a sub-category under Hollister's web site, but Hollister eventually figured out that Ameda really needed a web site under its own name, since that was the name people knew the product line as. But you know, that was as far as it went. Hollister did not seem any more enthusiastic about marketing the Ameda line than Ameda-Egnell itself had been. And they just kind of laid there as an also-ran next to Medela, when they had once been the dominant name. Too bad. Personally, I thought Ameda's electric pumps were a better product than Medela's electric pumps.

It's been kind of funny, sometimes Lactation Consultants can be kind of snobby about breastfeeding vs forumula feeding (of course), and even though Evenflo has had breast pumps on and off the market for years, they were considered mainly a "formula company" (I've never seen Evenflo formula btw, have you? only bottles & accessories), and as such were not treated especially welcome at these lactation centered conferences.

Wow. Now that Evenflo OWNS the second largest name in breast pumps, a quality product name, the conventioneers will have to deal with them, won't they. And as the press release says, with a synergistic union of a good product like Ameda's with the powerhouse marketing clout of Evenflo on department store shelves everywhere, I think Medela has something serious to worry about.

There are two foot-powered breast pumps on the market right now. One of them is positioned exactly right to take a bite out of everyone now. A really big one! ;-)

All the Breast,

Suzanne.

Please remember foot-powered.breastpump.com to your friends and family.